The landmark UN Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm in 1972 tried to steer a middle path between two
extreme and still influential views: the narrowly economic and
the unconditionally ecological.

The partisans of the "growth first" approach claimed
that all the other dimensions of development either would be
taken care of automatically by the "trickle down
effect" of rapid growth or else could be attended to in
better conditions once the country concerned had achieved a much
higher per capita GNP. This approach is still present in the
discussions on how to deal with "global change": on the
basis of a controversial cost benefit analysis, Nordhaus [70], to
quote the most extreme example, makes a plea for postponing
measures aimed at reducing the "greenhouse effects"
until the danger really knocks at our doors.

At the other extreme were the partisans of the zero rate of
growth. Some applied this concept only to the population. Others
extended it to both population and material growth, claiming that
real development should concentrate on qualitative rather than
quantitative aspects (for an up-to-date formulation of this
argument insisting on the need to reconstruct the natural capital
rather than to expand man-made capital as an investment priority,
see Daly [17]). In their most extreme formulations, the partisans
of an end to growth demanded the "de-industrialization"
of the rich countries and the non-industrialization of the poor
ones; the latter could serve in the meantime as a recreational
and cultural reserve for the rest of the world [20].

The population controversy

The demographic argument played an important role in the
debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although this argument
should be qualified in at least three respects.

First, contrary to a widespread belief, curbing the numbers of
"nonconsumers" will not greatly reduce the pressures on
resources and the environment. This point was rightly made by
Barry Commoner [13] and is today recognized even by the Ehrlichs
in their most recent book [21]. The environmental impact is a
function of the population, its affluence (GNP per head), and the
technology employed:

environmental impact = population x affluence x
technology

If we take as a proxy for affluence and technology the per
capita consumption of commercial energy, "a baby born in the
United States represents twice the destructive impact on Earth's
ecosystems and the services they provide as one born in Sweden,
three times one born in Italy, thirteen times one born in Brazil,
35 times one born in India, 140 times one in Bangladesh or Kenya,
and 280 times one in Chad, Rwanda, Haiti or Nepal" [21, p.
134]).

Seen from the resource consumption angle, the population
problem is essentially one of the rich people (wherever they are)
and countries. Moreover, the Commoner equation clearly shows that
the environmental impact may be reduced by acting on the other
two variables. Thus, lifestyles, consumption patterns, and
technologies in the North and in the affluent enclaves in the
South should be our first concern, without underestimating the
difficulty of achieving meaningful results with respect to
voluntary self-limitation of the growth of material consumption
on the part of the affluent minority.

Secondly, policies directed at birth control in third world
countries, desirable as they may be to slow down the rate
of population growth, are likely to prove deceptive if they do
not come as part of a social development package, including the
education of women, effective public health policies resulting in
reduced infant mortality, access to subsidized, rationed, or
distributed food for those who cannot afford to buy the minimum
ration, and some protection in old age.

The studies of Kerala by Raj et al. [76] and of Sri Lanka by
Panikhar et al. [73] documented the possibility of important
social advances in very poor regions. The same conclusion can be
drawn from the experience of China. More generally, it is
possible to argue that developing countries need not repeat the
historical sequence followed by the industrialized countries,
where the welfare concern appeared at a late stage of
development. The time sequence can be inverted provided that
adequate human resources (paramedical personnel, primary school
teachers, etc.) are trained, service delivery techniques with a
high labour content are chosen, and research is directed towards
modern yet inexpensive, preventive, and therapeutic techniques
and practices, as shown by Unicef (for a theoretical discussion,
see Sachs [81]).

By contrast, the experience of India shows that enforcing
(sometimes in the literal sense of this word) birth control
practices does not lead very far so long as the broader
contextual conditions outlined here are not present. And while
the impact of urbanization on reducing fertility cannot be
denied, the attendant social costs of massive migrations of rural
refugees to urban shanty towns are very high indeed [38].

Thirdly, the spatial maldistribution of the world population
poses at least as serious a problem as the rates of demographic
growth. This observation applies equally to rural and urban
areas. Some rural regions have a population that clearly exceeds
their carrying capacity. Others, on the contrary, do not have the
minimum density required for meaningful social health and
educational policies. Less than half the world's rural population
have access to basic health care. Half the rural women over 15
years old are illiterate. In most developing countries, those who
live in the countryside typically earn 25 to 50 per cent less
than those in the towns. Three-quarters of the poor people in the
South live in ecologically fragile zones. In order to survive,
they overexploit the natural resources to which they have only a
very limited access. The number of environmental refugees is
estimated at 14 million people.

The situation is particularly dramatic in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mortality of children under five still stands at 178 deaths for
every 1,000 live births. Almost two-thirds of the population lack
safe water, 18 million suffer from sleeping sickness, and malaria
kills hundreds of thousands of children each year [103].

The most dramatic social and environmental challenge in terms
of quality of life for billions of people is, however, the urban
explosion. The third world cities continue to expand as a result
of the massive rural exodus. They are attractive as
"lotteries of life," allowing upward mobility for the
lucky few or, perhaps, their children, and they are also places
where things still happen ("bread and circuses," but
also schools, hospitals, and jobs for some). According to UN
estimates, the urban population in the South will grow from I to
2 billion between 1980 and the year 2000 and double again in 25
years to reach 4 billion inhabitants in 2025. How many among them
will be condemned to live in shanty towns, enduring the double
plight of pollution by poverty and of pollution generated by
other peoples' affluence, which they may help produce while
sharing very little of its bounties? According to Hardoy et al.
[42], 600 million urban residents are exposed to serious health
risks on account of deficient water supply, sanitation, drainage,
and removal of household waste.

Without being equally dramatic, the situation in many cities
of the North and certainly of eastern Europe - is far from
satisfactory from both the social and environmental viewpoints.
Urban infrastructures have grown obsolete. Huge investments are
required to modernize and expand them, or even for
straightforward repair. Pockets of destitution remain. Social
exclusion and spatial segregation have not been overcome. In
several American cities, urban centres abandoned by affluent
people have been transformed into socially and economically
distressed ghettos inhabited by social minorities. Social
exclusion is increasingly present in European towns, resulting in
racial, religious, and ethnic conflicts.

Therefore, there is the need to put very high on the
environmental agenda the issues of the habitability of urban
agglomerations, of new rural-urban configurations, and, also, of
organized migrations from areas whose density of population
clearly exceeds their carrying capacity to places that can still
absorb the incomers. The first two of these have an important
science and technology component, while the third is eminently
political and ethical since it presupposes a willingness to
receive alien people on one's territory. It cannot be cast in
objective terms. This is all the more so in that the evaluation
of the carrying capacity is already a subjective and highly
controversial matter. In a study prepared for the Canadian
Conserver Society, Goldsmith [33] claimed that Canada is already
overpopulated! By contrast, pleading for "more immigrants,
please" so as to reach a population of 40 million, his
critics argued that if the 10 per cent of Canada's territory that
is habitable were as densely populated as the Netherlands, Canada
would have over 400 million people!

While the concept of carrying capacity is useful in so far as
it reminds us of the existence of outer limits, it cannot be
quantified once for all, as both the pattern of demand for
goods produced and the technological capability to produce
more while destroying less are likely to change over time.
Tricart and Killian [1023 have used the same argument to question
the concept of "agricultural vocation" of different
soils widely used in cartography. The only objective approach is
to list the physical constraints that new technologies may or may
not overcome.

The harmonization game

The middle path suggested by the UN Conference on the Human
Environment in Stockholm in 1972 consisted in reaffirming the
need for further growth with equity while incorporating
explicitly a concern for the environment as a dimension of
development conceived as a positive-sum game with Nature. Hence
the challenge of applying simultaneously to development thinking
the following three criteria:

equity in the formulation of social goals of
development, as an ethical imperative expressing the
synchronic solidarity with all the present travellers on
the Spaceship Earth;

ecological prudence as an ethical postulate of
solidarity with the future travellers and, also, as a
means to improve the present-day quality of life;

economic efficiency instrumental in making good
use of the manpower and material resources from the
macrosocial point of view, i.e. by taking into
consideration the hitherto externalized social and
ecological costs.

As this last criterion does not necessarily coincide with the
microeconomic profitability at the enterprise level, it follows
that ecodevelopment strategies - a shorthand for socially
equitable, environmentally viable, and economically efficient
strategies [82, 83] cannot be implemented in a pure market
economy. They call for a set of regulations on behalf of the
state within the broad framework of "mixed economies."
Tinbergen and Hueting [100] rightly point out that market prices
send wrong signals for sustainable economic success that mask
environmental destruction. "If collective side-effects
(externalities) are substantial and important, the classical
doctrine of the blessings of free trade simply becomes irrelevant
as a guideline for economic policy" [39].

Neoliberals interpret the collapse of the command economies in
eastern Europe as a proof a contrario of the excellence of
the unrestricted free-market model. However, when government
fails, will the market do better? Barry Lester's well-argued
reply [55] to this question shows that it need not be so, even in
terms of productive efficiency, not to mention that the free
marketeers relegate equity considerations to second place in the
development paradigm [43], while equity and efficiency should be
considered as complementary, not conflicting, goals [98]. Toye
[101] is right when he postulates a case by case pragmatic
analysis that is more costly, to decide whether failure should be
blamed on the state or the market.

The variables of the harmonization game are situated at both
the demand and supply levels, as well as in the location of
productive activities.

DEMAND. The most decisive variable here, but at the same time
politically the most difficult to manage, is the consumption
pattern reflecting the development style. Resource saving through
demand management implies one of the following solutions:

resource saving through greater discipline on the part of
consumers, retrofitting of the existing housing stock to
improve its energy efficiency, time scheduling of
activities to reduce peak hours, and, above all, better
organization of the production and distribution cycle In
so far as resources saved in this way and through better
maintenance of equipment and infrastructures may be
considered as a "development reserve" [84],
they constitute an important source of
"non-investment growth" [51];

a reduction in the consumption standards as postulated by
the advocates of "voluntary simplicity" and
self-restraint [48];

acceptance of more or less far-reaching substitutions
between material and non-material consumption: fewer
goods and more services or, in a more radical version,
less time spent in market-oriented economic activities
and more time allocated to noneconomic activities and/or
small-scale environmentally benign material production
for self-consumption [46, 36, 84];

shift from individual cars to mass transportation systems
or bicycles or else new kinds of environmentally benign
vehicles such as small electric cars;

reduce the demand for intra-urban transportation by
redesigning the cities (instead of traditional zoning,
put housing, work, trade, and leisure within walking
distance);

reduce the demand for long distance transportation by
better integrating local, regional, and national
economies, greater selectivity in external trade (without
falling into the autarky trap), and, in so far as it is
feasible, substituting communication for professional
(but not tourist) travel.

While the main obstacles will lie, as already mentioned, in
the political sphere, much will depend also on the availability
of attractive technical solutions, but not "technical
fixes" isolated from the cultural, ethical, institutional,
and political contexts.

SUPPLY It is here, at the intersection between Nature and
society, that technology plays a leading role. Nature provides
energy, space, and resources, i.e. those elements of the natural
environment that, thanks to the knowledge accumulated, can be
transformed into some `'use value" deemed as such by the
society. The concept of "resource" is therefore
essentially cultural and historical.

Society sets the values and the societal goals, builds the
institutions, and produces the knowledge - both traditional and
scientific (techne and episteme) - used to design
the goods corresponding to societal needs and aspirations, to
identify the resources, to invent the product and process
technologies and the necessary equipment. It also supplies the
workforce.

The production process combines in a given site resources and
energy with work and previously produced equipment to generate a
flow of "goods" that go to the market (or reach the
consumer through other institutional mechanisms) and of
"bads" that are dumped back in Nature, this time acting
as a sink.

It immediately follows from this schematic description that technology
constitutes potentially a privileged locus to harmonize the three
concerns of social equity, ecological prudence, and economic
efficiency. This can be achieved by a variety of means:

Promoting energy and resource saving through product and
process design, as well as upgrading the environmentally
sound traditional techniques.

Finding novel ways of using the specific resources of
each ecosystem, with special emphasis on renewable
resources, while recognizing that the conditions of their
renewability must be respected; a forest that is felled
without ensuring its regeneration or replanting is a mine
of timber, not a renewable resource. Furthermore,
assessing the value of biological resources cannot be
restricted to the value of products that are commercially
harvested ("productive use value") or collected
for self-consumption ("consumption use value").
It also calls for considering the indirect values of
ecosystem functions, such as watershed protection,
regulation of climate, and production of soil
("non-consumptive use value"), the intangible
values of keeping the options for future by preserving
the biodiversity ("existence and option
values") [59].

Minimizing the "bads" by resorting to low-waste
technologies.

Recycling and reusing non-renewable resources (aluminium
becomes a renewable resource in so far as it can be
reused several times).

Using the natural ecosystem as a paradigm for man-made
production systems; taking a horizontal view of
development in order to explore the potential
complementarities and synergies, in sharp contrast with
the prevailing compartmentalization and narrow
specialization; closing whenever possible the loops,
using the waste from one production module as an input in
the next module of the system, as illustrated by the
traditional Chinese dyke-pond systems [78] and all other
integrated food-energy production systems, with different
levels of technical sophistication [87].

By contrast, "careless" technologies prove
environmentally disruptive and socially costly. It is only
natural that left to itself an enterprise tends to externalize
its ecological and social costs in order to maximize the
internalized profits, up to the point when the environmental
disruption or the social discontent become a hindrance. But this
stage is reached only after having done considerable and often
irreversible damage, locally and globally. The anthropogenic
modifications of the biosphere have reached a worrying scale.
Ruffolo [79] suggestively contrasts the increasing might (potenza)
of our technologies with our utterly deficient political power (potere)
to control them (see also ref. 49).

LOCATION OF PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES. This is the third strategic
variable of the harmonization game. The environmental impact of
productive activities will greatly depend on the climatic and
topographic features of the site and the density and nature of
the human activities in the proximity. The ecodevelopment
approach calls for ecosystem-specific, culture-specific, and
site-specific solutions. In the last instance, global problems
can be solved only through a coordinated set of local solutions.
The future does not belong, however, to an archipelago of
self-contained local development units. Institutional
arrangements are called for to better articulate the local,
national, and transnational spaces of development, tilting the
balance in favour of bottom-up approaches to overcome the
inherited bias towards centralization and the cities.

It is important to emphasize that, far from being an attempt
to return to ancestral practices, respectful of Nature by
necessity in order to survive but situated at a very low level of
productivity, the approach that emerged from the UN Stockholm
Conference sought a modern development in harmony with Nature,
recreating the old peasant rationality at a completely different
level of the spiral of knowledge. It suggested searching for
knowledge-intensive, energy and resource-saving, environmentally
sound and socially responsive development paths. The utilization
of local knowledge is of enormous importance in this endeavour,
the task being to extract from it the original ideas it might
contain and to study them by applying the resources of modern
science. According to Amilcar Herrera, "the most important
local contribution would probably be, more than in concrete
specific technologies, in new approaches to the solution of old
problems, that might stimulate scientific research into hitherto
unexplored directions" [44, p. 28].